Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 56, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1916 — PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON [ARTICLE]

PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON

Some soothing balm the soul requires, when one must fuss with rub ber tires. lam a highly moral man; I guard my tongue the best I can; and if, perchance, I cuss a streak, remorse lambasts me for a week. A model I would gladly be, to growing youth and infancy, and ere I got a motor car, my fame for virtue traveled far. But often now I may be seen, all bathed in sweat and gasoline, and spotted o’er with rancid grease, dispensing words that break the peace. I jack my car up with my lyre, and try to patch a busted tire, and while I labor in the ditch, I’m laughed at by the idle rich, who whiz along in pomp and state, and peer the more unlucky skate. And as I toil with wrench and crank, I keep on saying, “Blinky blank,’’ and children toddling on their way give ear to smoky things I say, and as they leave, on learning bent, they whisper, “What a sinful gent!” A subscriber asks: “What globetrotter has made the quickest trip around the world?” John Henry Mears of the New York Evening Sun at present holds the record. Traveling east from New York city in 1913, he crossed the Russian empire by the Siberian railway and reached New York again in thirtyfive days, twenty-one hours and thirty-five minutes. In 1911 Andre Jaeger-Schmidt made the trip in 39 days; George Francis Train in 1890 made it in sixty-seven days; Nellie Bly, 1889, in 72 days; Captain Seymour, 1876, in 117 days; the Magellan expedition, 1519-22, in three years.—Outlook. \